April 16, 2014

Firstly, the level of the fine is tiny – considering the crime involved & the value of the artefacts, it counts somewhat lower than a slap on the wrist in the overall scheme of things.

Secondly, the auction house (In this case Christies, although in my past experience, none of the big auction houses have a particularly good reputation when it comes to looted artefacts) takes the moral high ground, making a point about how their due diligence is responsible for bringing about this case. Now, unless I’m misunderstanding the article completely (or the article is incorrect), the sequence of events is rather different to this.

Firstly, Christies lists the looted artefacts. Then, the true origin of the artefacts is spotted by Marcel Marée, a curator at the British Museum, who goes on to alert Christies of this. Finally, Christies contacts the Metropolitan Police’s Arts and Antiques Unit. I see nothing here that really makes me confident in Christies due diligence – the only reason the items didn’t end up at auction was because they happened to be spotted by someone who was entirely independent of the Auction House, who then took their own effort to alert them.

The fact also needs to be noted that the items were smuggled from Egypt in a suitcase on a flight – more needs to be done by countries to protect the egress of looted artefacts through their borders, helping to stop the trade by making it much more difficult for international buyers.

A UK court has fined a British citizen £500 after he admitted having attempted to sell a number of ill-gotten Egyptian antiquities.

Neil Kingsbury, who had previously worked on BBC documentary series about the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and other early archaeological adventures, was arrested after six items were identified in Christie’s London antiquities sale last year.
Kingsbury told Christie’s that he inherited the items from an uncle who had lived in Egypt for some years after serving in World War II.

However, one of the items – a relief fragment of a Nubian prisoner appearing to originate from the Amenhotep III Temple in Luxor’s Thebes – was spotted in Christie’s catalogue of items before the auction sale by Marcel Marée, a curator at the British Museum.

All six items — which are between 3,000 and 4,000 years old — were pulled from the sale a few days before it was due to start.

Christie’s contacted the Metropolitan Police’s Arts and Antiques Unit (MPAA) which arrested Kingsbury and interviewed him before referring him to court.

During a nine-month trial, Kingsbury revealed he had bought the items from a man called Mohamed who owned a series of shops, including one in a five-star hotel complex in Luxor, and brought them to Britain in a suitcase.

Due to his cooperation and confession, Kingsbury was told he would not be sentenced to prison. Beside the £500 fine, he was also ordered to pay £50 as a court fee.

“This case shows how our procedures, our due diligence and the transparent and public nature of our sales combine to make our salesroom highly unattractive to those engaged in the illicit trade,” Christie’s spokesman told Ahram Online, adding that he hoped the incident will send a strong message to those engaged in illicit trade.

Hi, I am not sure that having Egyptian, Spanish, Italian etc etc customs opening everybody’s carefully packed luggage to see if they’ve not slipped an ancient coin in their folded socks on the way home is really the way we want to see this go. This is the collectors’ argument (“”They” should take more care of their stuff, if they did, we would not take it”). We’d all suffer because of the smugglers that way.

Surely (in addition, obviously, to random checks of travellers by customs) there should be more control on artefacts suddenly “surfacing” from nowhere at all. So in the Kingsbury story involving a dead uncle, what documentary proof was offered? Documents proving the uncle existed, had served in Egypt, had brought stuff back legally and the will where Mr K is bequeathed them? Or did the seller just turn up, tell the story about this “uncle” and that was enough for the auction house to accept these items? If Christies are taking the high ground over their due diligence, then the least they can do is tell us – and future potential clients – just how exactly they verified that collecting history.

I agree – we don’t want everyone’s luggage opened – but with the amount of technology developed now for detecting drugs, explosives etc in suitcases, surely these devices would also notice large fragments of stone if & when they scan the luggage.

But of course, provenance is all important – and should as you say be backed up by some sort of documentary evidence, rather than a quickly dreamed up story about them having belonged to a distant relative for years.

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